Raízen Brand Guidelines: A Shell–Cosan Venture, Cane Ethanol & Shell Stations

Two groups, one name.

Raízen was born from a deal between a Brazilian sugar group and an oil major. On 1 February 2010, Cosan and Shell announced a joint venture that would combine their sugar, ethanol and fuel distribution businesses in Brazil, English Wikipedia says; Portuguese Wikipedia dates the creation of the company itself to 2011. The name, Portuguese Wikipedia says, joins the words “raiz” (root) and “energia” (energy), a nod to the two worlds the company came from: the cane fields and the fuel market.

The two partners brought different halves. From Cosan came the mills that grew and crushed cane to make sugar and ethanol and to generate power; from Shell came the business of distributing and selling fuel, including a network of service stations and supply bases at airports, Portuguese Wikipedia says. The company has since described itself as an integrated energy business, covering every step from growing cane to selling fuel at the pump.

That arrangement explains the brand most Brazilians see. Raízen’s fuel stations do not carry the Raízen name: they trade as Shell. On its website the company says it distributes and sells fuels, lubricants and services under licence of the Shell brand, working with its network of resellers, and that the Shell mark is licensed to Raízen. The Raízen name itself appears mostly on the corporate side: on the mills, in investor material, in its integrated reports and on its foundation.

The business spread beyond Brazil. In October 2018 Raízen completed the purchase of Shell’s refining and fuel distribution assets in Argentina, Portuguese Wikipedia says, the start of its international expansion, and it also entered Paraguay. In November 2019 the Mexican group FEMSA agreed a joint venture for half of Raízen’s convenience retail arm, English Wikipedia says, a deal that also brought the OXXO store chain into Brazil.

Cane, ethanol and bioenergy.

On the agricultural side, Raízen describes a business that wastes as little of the cane plant as it can. Its website says it uses cane to make ethanol of the first and second generation, sugar, bioelectricity, biogas and biomethane, and that “nothing is wasted.” Portuguese Wikipedia says the company makes many types of sugar, from liquid, refined and crystal sugar to organic sugar and the raw VHP grade shipped for export.

The second-generation ethanol is the part the company has most often put forward. In November 2014 Raízen began operating its first plant making second-generation ethanol, known as E2G, on a commercial scale at Piracicaba, in São Paulo state, Portuguese Wikipedia says. The fuel is made from the straw and bagasse left over from ordinary sugar and ethanol production. The same source records a supply deal with Grupo Boticário, which began using Raízen’s E2G in some perfume lines in 2019.

Power from cane residue runs through the business too. The company burns bagasse, straw and leaves to make steam for its own processes and to drive the turbines that produce electricity, Portuguese Wikipedia says; Raízen opened its first biogas plant, fed with waste from cane processing, in October 2020, and its first solar plant in 2019. On certification, the same source says 21 of the company’s 26 units held Bonsucro certification, citing Raízen’s 2018–19 annual report.

Fuels remain the other pillar. In 2022 Raízen bought Shell’s lubricants business in Brazil, creating Raízen Lubrificantes, and in June 2022 it opened its first electric-vehicle charging station in São Paulo under the Shell Recharge name, Portuguese Wikipedia says. The company also kept Shell’s place in Brazilian motor racing, sponsoring the Shell Racing team in Stock Car, and runs the Fundação Raízen, which works with communities near its operations on training courses for young people.

Fields, mills and reports.

Sugar and ethanol producers sit between the farm and the factory, and their identities usually show both sides. Many use green, blue or gold in their wordmarks and colour systems, and their websites and reports lean on photographs of the raw material: rows of cane in Brazil or India, beet harvests and clamps in northern Europe, and the mills, boilers and storage silos that turn a crop into sugar, alcohol and power.

Most of these companies sell more to industry than to shoppers, so the consumer face is often a separate brand. A packaged sugar name on a supermarket shelf can be older than the group that owns it, and the same group may also make bioethanol for fuel, alcohol for drinks and cosmetics, animal feed from beet pulp, and electricity from bagasse, the fibre left after cane is crushed. Tereos, for example, sells sugar in France under the Béghin Say name, while Raízen sells fuel in Brazil under a licensed Shell brand.

Ownership shapes the language. Cooperatives such as Tereos speak to and for their grower members, and talk about fields, harvests and the farmers who supply the mills; listed companies and family groups address investors, and joint ventures often carry the names of their parents. Their websites tend to follow a familiar pattern, with pages on products, sustainability and the communities around their mills.

Much of what can be checked about these companies sits in their annual and sustainability reports, stock-exchange filings and regional business press. This guide sets out who founded each producer, who owns it, where it operates and what it says about its brands, and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A listing, then a restructuring.

Raízen became a listed company in 2021. It registered for an initial public offering with Brazil’s securities regulator, the CVM, in June and raised the money in August, English Wikipedia says. Cosan and Shell remained the controlling shareholders; in October 2026 InvestNews, carrying a Bloomberg report, still described the company as jointly controlled by Shell and the Cosan conglomerate.

The following years were harder. Portuguese Wikipedia says the company increased long-term investment from 2016, mostly funded with debt, in second-generation ethanol, solar power and biogas. On 10 March 2026 Raízen asked a São Paulo court for recuperação extrajudicial, an out-of-court restructuring of its debts, and the court accepted the request on 13 March, Portuguese Wikipedia says. The plan, the same source says, includes a return to the core businesses of sugar, ethanol and fuel and lubricant distribution, along with asset sales. The business magazine Capital Aberto called it the largest out-of-court restructuring in the country.

The restructuring will split the company. At a shareholders’ meeting on 30 October 2026, Capital Aberto reported on 6 November, shareholders approved the separation of the business into two independent companies: Raízen Energia, for ethanol, sugar and bioenergy, and Raízen, for the distribution of Shell-brand fuels and lubricants. They also approved a capital increase in which part of the creditors’ debt is to be converted into shares. The handover of shares and new bonds to creditors had not been completed at the time of writing; Capital Aberto said the timetable allows until March 2027, with creditors choosing their payment options by 3 December 2026. The company’s website footer already lists Raízen S.A. with an address in Rio de Janeiro and Raízen Energia S.A. with one in São Paulo.

For a design guide, Raízen shows a company whose most visible face is a licensed brand, while its own name lives on mills, reports and the cane fields. Compare Tereos, the French cooperative that entered Brazilian cane through a partnership with Cosan, and Louis Dreyfus, another agricultural commodities group. For this guide we use root violet, cane green and bagasse gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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